


What’s In Your Head

by idrilhadhafang



Series: Sequel Trilogy Missing Scenes [43]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types
Genre: Angst and Tragedy, Canon Compliant, Future Character Death, Future Torture, Gen, Minor Poe Dameron/Ben Solo, Minor Poe Dameron/Kylo Ren, Missing Scene
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-17
Updated: 2021-03-17
Packaged: 2021-03-26 03:47:35
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 570
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/30099831
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/idrilhadhafang/pseuds/idrilhadhafang
Summary: What was Ben dreaming about the night Luke nearly killed him?
Series: Sequel Trilogy Missing Scenes [43]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1931056
Collections: Allbingo, Bad Day Collection





	What’s In Your Head

**Author's Note:**

> Prompt: Mind
> 
> Disclaimer: I own nothing.

On the outside, Ben Solo looked peaceful when he slept, but inside, his head was all but chaos. He didn’t wonder if he looked peaceful on the outside; no one could see what they looked like during sleep, after all.   
  
But in his head, they were screaming.   
  
***  
  
 _The torture rack that he kept seeing in his nightmares, cloaked in shades of steel blue, even as he watched Poe lying back on there. He didn’t know why his vision was so very narrowed; he could only assume that he was wearing a mask. It was like it was trapped there, like a horror holo that he’d watched when he was nineteen.  
  
“I had no idea that we had the best pilot in the Resistance onboard,” he said, and even his own voice sounded wrong. Like it was muffled, almost unintelligible.   
  
Poe glared up at him. Defiant, wonderful. He loved Poe for it; he just wished it wasn’t aimed at him.   
  
“Comfortable?” Ben said. Or...whoever he was supposed to be.   
  
“Not really.”  
  
Ben walked forward. “I’m impressed,” he said. “No one’s been able to get out of you what you did with the map.”  
  
“You might wanna rethink your technique.”  
  
And Ben did. Even as Poe’s head cracked against the torture rack, even as Ben pleaded in his mind for it to stop...he found he was all but frozen, like he was watching the dream outside his body.   
  
“Put me in his place,” he wanted to say, but his lips could not move. He could not wake up. _  
  
***  
  
 _He stood on a bridge, watching lasers like red comets streaking across the galactic sky. Planets being snuffed out in an instant — and it hurt.  
  
The Voice asked him, “Is it not beautiful? The way we can eliminate disorder in an instant?”  
  
How could any of this be beautiful? _  
  
***  
  
 _A red lightsaber, going through his own father. His own voice, clear as a bell, thanking his father — and somehow, he wasn’t wearing the mask anymore. He was free. And —  
  
“No!” Ben wanted to say, wanted to scream. “Don’t kill him! I’ll do anything. I can’t let him die...” _  
  
***  
  
 _His mother, lying on a bed, dying while reaching out to Ben with her final breath. Ben didn’t know what killed her, but he knew, just knew, that he had something to do with it._  
  
***  
  
There was more. Poe, watching Snap be murdered before his eyes. Everyone, everything, dying...  
  
 _I won’t let them,_ he tried to argue with the Voice in his mind. _Put me in their place, anything — I can’t fail them..._  
  
 _We have a guest, Ben. Open your eyes and give him a proper greeting..._  
  
The hum of a lightsaber. Ben opened his eyes — and that was when he saw Luke. A lightsaber ignited — didn’t Luke know that he had been struggling? That he would have given everything for those he loved, even begging to take the pain for them?  
  
Had Uncle Luke turned his lightsaber on? Had it always been on?  
  
Either way, Ben had to defend himself.   
  
He summoned his lightsaber to his hand. Luke screamed out, “Ben, no!”, like somehow he could explain all of this, any of this.   
  
The lightsabers clashed. Ben knew he wasn’t strong enough, especially not startled awake (to say the least), so he thought, quickly.   
  
He reached. Reached through and pulled.   
  
He swore _something_ was laughing in his head before the hut came down.


End file.
